I D E A L I S M
by BraveChicken
Summary: It's the superhero AU I always ask for. Lance is a great thief. Team Voltron has a betting pool on who will finally catch him. They all have superpowers that are elemental and that ties them together... they just weren't planning on Lance to be a part of those ties.
1. Chapter 1

**Present Day ( UTC-15:46 )**

There was a small municipal airport about five miles from where Lance grew up.

And inevitably Lance was drawn to the place.

At first, he thought it was the thrill of experiencing something new. Later, he'd reflect on the probability that he enjoyed the airport so much simply because of his fondness for Top Gun or the general romanticism that encompasses flying as Sinatra himself had serenaded his childhood with riffs and dreams of flying far and free. That, _perhaps_ , after enough visits, the same sentimentality might work it's way into the rest of his life; opening doors and breaking windows until Lance was no longer bored of his own story.

But as time learned to keep pace with the sun and days drifted by, Lance grew older and found himself still seated below at the airport watching planes go by. And most tangibly, he knew, he stayed because of the opposing nature of a supposedly liminal space. The dichotomy which states that things always change but remain the same.

Or how it wasn't home but could feel that way regardless.

And while such dreams never fully came into fruition, what lance wanted most was to fly. He never had the money for classes and even if he did, he wouldn't have the means to maintain it.

It is amidst one of these rather common sessions of idle dreaming that Lance sits atop the roof of the airport. One tanned and another casted hand behind his head, sunglasses loosely protecting his enraptured gaze into the sunny sky. And it is with the same soft breeze that sets planes afloat and which tips scales just slightly enough that Lance muttered, mostly to himself, "How did things turn out so _wrong?"_

And though the statement was rhetorical there was, of course, an answer in an airy voice which boomed with the strength of a stiff wind.

"Simple enough," a pair of combat boots walked past Lance's head adding their two-cent commentary, "you got caught."

The boots were meaningfully old with worn soles and cracked patches, the scars of times where the garment was used for necessity rather than fashion and was treated with a rather equivalent care. The boots themselves were creaking with the slowly shifting weight of a wearer who, though in near-constant travel, never covered any distance.

The contrast was abrasive at best.

And so, Lance's voice carried the same rotund lilt his eyes followed behind his sunglasses as he snarked, "I'm ninety-eight percent sure I came willingly."

"You were blown up."

"Something I did willingly, did I not?"

The boots stilled. A small huff littered the air followed by the weary grunt as dark hair and blindingly white fringe sat beside the not-pilot.

There was silence as the wind howled in quiet agony, the breeze itself carrying a chill through both men.

"I don't pretend to know why or how any of this happened- but it seemed like you made a decision out there, Lance."

It was far from accusatory. Laced with good intentions which blur the disastrous past of a kindred spirit that prompted Lance to sit up, removing his sunglasses for proper conversation.

"And you want my answer?"

Muddled brown met eyes made of sky; each one fluctuating between winter and spring, a wayward quality which was atmospheric at-best.

"The answer can wait. What I want to know is why."

The look he got in return was full of misery and hope. And, mind you, it is there that this story begins. Not as backstory and not as a tale spinning off into the unknown- but as a question set firmly in the fleeting firmness of the present. And as there are no absolutes in this life, no reply could provide every necessary answer. But, mind you, there is reason to try.

* * *

A/N: I know I never finish things. But I have an actual plot and I intend to tell this story... Please review!


	2. Chapter 2

He first met Shiro on what you might call a typical evening on the job.

It was an art museum. It almost always was. There's an unspoken classism there. An almost imperceptive note that what is said to be rare, expensive, and also beautiful is of the utmost value and would, perhaps, be most missed.

Loftily he'll consider his statements, written in the papers which pay his rent, that it's this method which made a name for himself. Especially when he resold the works back to the country of it's origin to people who payed top dollar who somehow managed to place the paintings in more established museums after a small shuffle in the background.

After all, he's a thief due to necessity not for greed. There's an ironic note within there somewhere which rings out in the same muddy tones of the paintings he's known to steal. Which sings of a somber song similar to the tune of his sister in her hospital bed. Both beautiful, both wasted indoors and both fleeting and fading until, inevitably, they find themselves stolen away.

He knows his name instantly as any good reporter would.

Captain Shirogane of the Voltron branch. One of four gifteds who typically take on the higher crime within the area. Spanning further than their California borders but also tied, albeit loosely, to their small government funding.

Good people. Cool abilities. Their only mistake is signing with the government because that makes his job a seemingly insignificant twinge more illegal than if they weren't. Because resisting arrest and fighting these guys is suddenly illegal, too.

There are many theories which consider the four officers to have been government funded from the beginning. Lance does his best to spread this theory around. After all, how could there only be four gifted people in this world unless they weren't gifted but created. But of course, semantics are reserved for his day job.

He knows the answer is neither. That these powers were found. And they call him a thief.

* * *

"I've got eyes on him."

"Eyes on who?"

"On Blue!"

He was a thief. A great thief, actually. The kind that had never been caught. The kind that never would.

"There haven't been any reports of theft- are you sure he's-" Pidge was hovering over the comms, her fingers rapidly retracing their chase even as Shiro moved her aside to reach the microphone.

"Keith, do not engage! We have no probable cause!"

"He's here and he's wanted, Shiro, that's a good enough reason for me to pursue."

"You'll only start a chase."

"What? Afraid I'll win the pool?"

"No, I'm afraid you'll lose control."

The silence afterward was punctuated by Pidge's own expressionless glare ambiguously directed down towards the comm control panel.

"Keith." It was a warning. A choice but also a command.

And it was at that moment Blue turned around,the grin on his Lion Mask possibly more mocking than usual matching suit with his tone of voice as he taunted,"Might want to listen to your orders, Kogane. I haven't stolen anything but your wasted time tonight."

"Doesn't change the fact that you have stolen in the past. You're a wanted criminal."

"Aw, you want me that bad, huh?"

Keith grit his teeth trying to reel in whatever patience he had left. With each clench of his hand, small bursts of fire emerged in tiny flicks serving as a reminder of his quickly quivering self-control.

A high whine escaped Blue as he stood there, arms crossed lazily over his chest, inspecting his nails with an air of indifference.

"Well there's no need to get all hot and bothered about it. Can't a cat take a stroll in the dark?"

"I'm bringing you in."

"Oh, babe, your boyfriend can still hear you." he whispered theatrically, "Now I know I'm a thief but I would never steal you."

Keith never was a man of many words. Words got in the way of justice. Words also got people out of justice. To Keith, words were as decipherable as books were to a dog- things to chew on and spit out at best.

So one might speculate that the words spoken by an innocuous thief weren't enough to break a man man of magma like Officer Kogane. But it took one more sentence from Blue and like poets to a sonnet, Keith snapped. Flames infiltrated his field of vision, the comms crackled ominously in his ear with cautions and close-calls from Shiro.

"Okay, so you didn't appreciate the joke." Blue remarked; his voice light as he backed away from the unfriendly inferno. Unfortunately for him, such a tactic was an unlikely success causing his retreating leg to smoothly change stance as he parried a particularly pointed punch.

A punch which was quickly succeeded by a second and a third and then a foot which Blue ducked with impressive ease considering his height. And on it went atop that rooftop with close calls and occassional burns noticed mostly by Blue and only by Keith due to the slight hiss and subsequent snark.

And with each near miss and grazing hit- Keith's anger took control raising his body temperature to extreme levels, his own fury fanning the flames which, by now, engulfed his entire form. It was the small surprise of actual contact which stunned Keith enough to remember those words. Words which were now spewing from the masked face of his most petty villain.

"Just calm down. Breathe in, man. Good. You're practically supernova. Calm. Breathe- in and out. In and-"

He was kneeling in bubbling puddle of water. Surrounding him was a box of ice. And if the steam itself wasn't enough the sudden cut of oxygen had his mind dipping to a much lower boiling point. And he coughed. He coughed a lot and uncontrollably. And over the dehydrated hacks, right before his heat headache came careening in with enough force to knock him out- Keith could have sworn he heard one more stream of words before the darkness.

"Don't look so surprised. It just wouldn't do to have you giving people like us a bad rep."


	3. Chapter 3

"Keith! Stop, he's not powered! You'll kill him!"

There was a roaring resounding within the communication room. A roaring and then static.

And it was with that static- the encompassing noise. The airy ambuguity. That Shiro rode towards the call with stress and worry at his heels.

A recklessly large part of Shiro trusted Keith entirely. The more rational side, however, argued that Keith was less adapted to their new abilities despite the first anniversary which passed a few weeks ago.

And so, he expected to stumble into a lot of scenes upon arriving at that rooftop. In hindsight, he'll be grateful for their meeting to have gone as smoothly as it did.

In all the scenarios he'd imagined, a fight had occurred. After forming Voltron, the band of four had quickly made a name for themselves. Granted, flying rocks, spontaneous vine wrapping, wind and fire were all difficult things to ignore when they happened on a large scale and amidst a heavily populated city. And where there is a hero there is, as per Murphy's Law and a mysterious stream of bad luck, always several others who did not like the hero.

In a business such as theirs, it is not only smart but necessary to assume your enemies are volatile and vile. And while no tangible harm had ever been done by the hands of Blue, a thief is a _thief_.

Shiro always thought that, upon backing a cat into a corner, they'd reach out and use their claws.

Real life told him they'd rather jump off a roof.

And maybe it was the chill he left in the air at his dramatic exit, but there was something in his eyes which was neither vile nor volatile.

* * *

It had to be a mistake. This world, these abilities. It had to be a hiccup that happened just once because they had never meant to have them. They ate away inside, stronger than their hosts and struggling to be let loose. It's everyone's humanity which kept things in check. Humanity as well as each other. But there were days where fire licked at it's cage in need of something cooler. Where the Earth was too dry and the vines shriveled up. Where the air was too stale, its cadence harsh as it raked throughout them all.

Someone had been missing. Stolen away from them by theft itself.

Saved by their return and drowning in their sorrow. The source of life amidst a world amiss.

* * *

Lance woke up cold. He always did.

He considered it comeuppance or divine irony. Regardless, he hated the cold. He hated the cold, perhaps the most, when he woke up not in his junky apartment but instead in a cliché warehouse. One might think, considering his two jobs, that at some point he had been kidnapped before.

You would be incorrect in such a presumption. Both as Lance and as Blue, he was nothing if not a strategist. And the result was an abundance of precautions.

Precautions he followed loosely as he ran from Shiro and Keith on that rooftop.

After he outted himself as gifted for the first time in public.

He was cold as the weight of reality, it's icy solidity- melted in his desperate hold. He messed up. He had been backtracking to his apartment, about to turn in for the night after his plans were dashed by misaimed vengeance in the form of a fiery inferno. He'd spent too much time looking behind him and found himself falling for a figurative but irritatingly literal trap.

He was thankful when someone cleared his mind as well as their throat. It emerged from behind- placing him on the same precarious ledge. It was a smart tactic- he felt well and truly vulnerable held in place by chains built into the floor. The angle excruciating despite his generally agile nature.

"Blue, isn't it?"

"Just like the color."

"That's an oddly simple name for a smartass such as yourself."

"It's a nickname."

Clearly, they didn't care, their voice remaining behind him. But he refused to give them the satisfaction of sneaking a peak.

"You have a job." They demanded.

"Oh? No thanks, I've already got two."

"You misunderstand my inflection- you have a job and it is in your best interest that you see it through."

There was a blink and then the wind was knocked out of him and with what was left of his breath, Lance did what he always does: dig the hole he lives in all the deeper.

"Isn't there an interview process?" Another quick jab left him gaping uselessly at the ground as he struggled to remind his lungs of the importance for good, hard work. Something his kidnapper took advantage as they finally stepped forward, their cloak covering most features while long streams of hair settled over a breathless Blue.

"You are a thief. A worthless stain upon society. It isn't you we need but your services. I suggest you begin showing me more respect, filth."

Pride and petulance coupled together in that moment as Lance lifted his head up into frightening golden eyes, a glare resting on his face as he panted, "And who do you presume yourself to be?"

"There is no presumption, _boy._ I am Haggar."

And at such simple words Lance felt the coldness spread. Because in this urban jungle he considers home, Haggar was a household name known to be the right hand of the biggest crime lord this side of the century.

Zarkon. Next to Disney and ignorance, he was practically the world power. A world power that capitalized on his abuse of such.

"In light of your discovery I will repeat myself a final time. You have a job to do, Lance."

He was numb. He was frozen. And frankly, he was in over his head.


	4. Chapter 4

May 5 ( UTC-15:49 )

It was a chilly spring day. All was well as all should always be. Yet, despite the mundane nothingness, an impending sort of feeling seemed to carry through the city, subtle as breath and as unnoticed as such. There wasn't anything palpable, of course. No eerie feelings, nothing even remotely suspicious, and no odd calm or over-business. Just normalcy. Plain and simple, terribly repetitive normalcy.

So, amongst the casual disregard it would seem that impending thoughts were considered normal. Given American society as it is, perhaps that is true. With everyone in a constant state of disarray gallivanting hopefully from one job to the next with promises to keep and many more to break until sheer exhaustion ceases man's haste. Only, then, to trudge through dreams and desires and fears one is likely to never experience. And yet they are the only things we cast a second glance towards.

Building after building, the city gives way to more casual and less identical housing, the new diversity only slightly lessening the maddening repetition a long and constant travel imbues. Roads stretch farther, trees grow higher, and the stream grows wider with each passing mile. The music itself only mimicking the songs of yesterday as it has for two years now as overlooked as the motor's purr.

Birds, previously so content in the trees attempt suicide for brief adrenaline; a quiet blinking echoing about as the bus plows onward towards the somber streets of home. Symphonic commonality erupts about as neighbors fret over their caged gardens and square grass ignoring the bitter reality revealing its uselessness. The city doesnt offer a green thumb, after all.

For a blink of a moment, the incessant roar of the city is drowned by the sharp squeel of the bus door whooshing open. The lone gasp reverberating as the driver pulls the gears shut once more.

Two long, muddy converse clamber on up the drive leaving sopping muck as a lonely trail until they pause, a mat beside them stating, "WIPE YOUR PAWS YOU FILTHY MUTT." Ignoring the rugged reprimand, the high tops sidestepped nearly mirroring the shadow that casts over the offending accessories as they pause on the doorstep of the grungy apartment complex. Only the simple sounds of a city neighborhood resound, chittering about in it's own reckless ambiance.

Two equally dirt-ridden Nauticas pause catty-corner to the Converse, the feet shuffling back and forth as their owner shifts her weight perpetually, their previous yellow coloring exuding energy and life.

"Hey." The Nautica's state, a soft curiosity and solemnity laced within the greeting.

"Hey yourself. What are you doing you out here? I thought you were supposed to stay inside. You know, heal?" Converse answered, the owner's voice loud with concern.

"I like to do that stuff outside."

"Yeah, except it's cold." The unamused voice questioned, the tone rather chiding but the thought a failed comfort.

"Whatever. Just open the door, I have to pee." The Nautica's responded, her tone light.

The Converse stood still as the sounds of keys jingled throughout the oddly not-awkward of the moment. A tan hand slowly slid towards the door, shaking in an obvious fashion yet stiff in hopes of covering the unavoidable.

A light crash resounded, the wad of keys now directly in front of the grungy converse. The hand returned as the man bent down to grasp the fallen keys revealing shaggy brown hair and a blindingly blue sweatshirt- also caked with dirt. Defensive navy eyes glanced toward the girl, her hair the same warm brown which reached just past her waist, the locks the epitome of barely-contained chaos. He looked past her then, towards the sky. A look of utter penitence absorbing his features. The sun seeming to illuminate his face revealing the stark contrast between tanned skin and the wide spray of darker freckles along his cheeks and mainly his nose as if they were splattered as an after thought by the dying star itself.

Standing to his full, tall frame, the young man began round two, this time successfully opening the heavy door.

Wasting no time, the dirt-covered laborer strode towards the kitchen, the quick footsteps of his sister scuffling the opposite direction.

With a crestfallen sigh, Lance pulled the sweatshirt over his head releasing a cloud of dry dirt as he quickly tossed the soiled clothing on the floor. His hands reaching towards a glass and filling it with water- habitual- as he watched the particles settle on the mound of unopened mail that covered the wooden table.

Silence engulfed the room, light brown decorating nearly illuminating white, the result of which resounded a firm filthiness. An uncleanliness of extreme fallacy. Lance grimaced, his eyes lingering even as he turned around to stare out the window. A barely audible flush resounded down the hall.

Walking far slower this time with a step of exuberance and timidity, the girl- still clad in her Nauticas, stood in the doorway of the kitchen. She didn't say a thing as she observed her brother, his gaze farther than the stark-white letters he supposedly stared at. He was an average height, standing a meager inch below six feet. Though, his thin and lanky frame seemed to market him as taller than he truly was. His grey shirt was still wet with sweat, his muscles still pumped from a long and arduous work day. His converse drowning his feet in a wet and used way.

It was a beautiful day filled with vivid greens and strong oranges all wrapped in a soothing yellow.

The indoors were simply too blue. Too cold. Too dismal.

"So," the girl ventured to ask, "Um, how was your day?"

The brother blinked, his head shooting up to regard his older sibling, a mask covering his true emotions even in the short time it took for him to blink.

"Hm? Oh, yeah… it was good." He answered a little too quickly, his gaze sliding over the mustard-colored walls, "How about you? How was the doctor?"

"Fine. Nothing new." She chirped stubbornly deciding conversation was rather unwanted when directed towards herself.

"Order pizza for dinner?"

"Yes."

It's an odd thing to consider when one is a laborer by day and a dreamer by night, that the things many yearn to grasp are perpetually unattainable. When the roles one carries drips onto the blank page that is life, we often grow offended by the choice of color. The metaphorical grass always appearing so very green when being sliced by the swirling blades of a neighbor's mower. Danger seems a comfort when safety was your only option. Even stranger is to consider the eerie silence night provides. If night is a time of dreams and life, and day a consequence alongside a new page, the book one authors seems disconnected in the same threadbare way commercials advertise throughout a film and the volume is inconsistent.

A static, previously unnoticed, appears in the milky haze; a heavy sort of silence hanging about through the rest of the evening. It's sleek and inky tone palpitating through the atmosphere with each measured tick of the decrepit analogue clock. Disregarded at first, as all things tend to be, with a swift and steady drip through time's clenched fingers. Spiney. Straggly. And, as a whole, grotesque.

It lingered about, long after the disinteresting idle chatter was round into a nondescript pizza for two- bacon being the topping of choice. And though the moment was innocent, the scene itself was bittersweet because everything was fine and boring and an intoxicatingly normal which seemed to remain even as a shrill tone pierced through the listless night.

And that next day was normal for mostly all except five.

* * *

May 6 ( UTC-05:23 )

As someone who worked three jobs, Lance was often awake before the sun itself acknowledged the following day with it's uninspired arrival. So when he sat in the parking lot, head rested on dirt-ridden jeans in the cool air of a true May day, it was considered odd to see a heartbeat glow in the distance.

And the sudden inclination to walk towards the source might have been his curiosity or it might have been the puppet string which fate, destiny, or misfortune had tugged him on rather insensitively. Regardless, the urge carried him forward pulling him higher to what might be his highest height as a crater lead way to a tunnel which, in turn, gave way to gravity.

And while the height might be figurative the drop is rather literal and he knew he'd been knocked cold because he woke up that way.

In fact, everything was cold.

With a confused gasp, a foggy cloud of hot air wrapped itself around his head, entering inside and muddling his thoughts. There was a burning to his left and upon glancing towards it, Lance reasoned that it might be due to the ice which covered his shoulder connecting it to the floor where his own terrified face was reflected throughout the icy landscape. Cave-scape?

Involuntarily, he gave a single mad flap of his arm expecting resistance or a numb sort of shattering but instead the ice became water floating up in melted mischief. Blue eyes stared in quiet shock as time seemed slow to a crawling teeter, treading timidly and on its own term.

He blinked.

He blinked and the world righted itself as well as it could and the water which floated suddenly flooded dragging Lance under in it's thunderous waves and amidst the anxious ataxia - a general sort of lurch in brainpower allowed him to note that it didn't seem as though the water wished to drown him. Instead, it felt like it wanted help him.

And he supposed it did considering the drop he'd had entering in was now looking level with land. Land where the sun had already risen.

Land where in which he found himself anchored back into reality when he opened his phone and everything came crashing down.

* * *

May 6 ( UTC-11:09 )

Sickness for some, many, and possibly all- is unnavoidable.

We try to be healthy. We try to take care of ourselves and if not ourselves- then of those we love. But sometimes our own fleeting essence simply runs too fast for us to catch.

People handle pain differently.

Similar to allergies, only certain people react violently. And, seeing as death is sort of the over-arching anvil of life, then it would make sense that such a theme is healthy, almost. And, according to such a theory, it would seem normal that one would only react with extreme violence in far rarer instances.

Or so logic would imply. But logic always was a know-it-all.

Either way, the following days knitted into one terrible sweater. Wool and prickly with the thorns of life's rose garden.

And Lance was a laborer in that garden for 25 years of life. Sowing what the world had wrought even as the garden itself- full of thorns and weeds- grew smaller and smaller, one family member's passing at a time. And in that quarter-decade, he had lost both parents. His siblings, then, were scrambled into the foster care system.

A seizure. Unexpected. For Lance's last blood relative, Victoria, it was a chase she couldn't quite run anymore.

A race Lance would refuse to lose even if he had to lie, cheat, beg and ultimately- steal.

And if you were to ask he'd say it felt more like he was chosen. And if you asked what for he wouldn't quite know.

But something happened on that average tuesday.

Just before his world came crashing down he'd reached the highest high and at the time he'd thought it was coincidence. And with time he figured it was the game of life and it'd simply raised the stakes. Perhaps the reality is that he was given the key to change the misprints of fate.

* * *

A/N: Yeah so here's Lance's vague backstory. I know it's lofty- but tell me what you think and what you got from it! I really wanna know. (And leisurely chats are the jam within my PB&J so lay 'em on me lads!)


	5. Chapter 5

November 7 ( UTC-12:00 )

A cold numbness followed him after that day. A storm which refused to pass.

The sort of everlasting storm which life often tosses our way when we're too busy feeling particularly low. The sort that we enjoy at first for the burst of excitement it provides. The disruptions of seemingly constant monotony - the thunder deafening our angry thoughts, allowing us to bask it it's impetuously symphonic and perhaps slightly manic cataclysm. The storm is, perhaps, the most exhilarating part of life. But after enjoying the initial impact you suddenly wish to return to normalcy.

Because suddenly what was exciting in theory is being tested as misfortune in your own life.

And while you never thought such exciting things would occur without such risk- you somehow thought the fee would be stuff you felt you could lose until you have the misfortune of realizing how it feels to lose a pure piece of yourself as actual, alternative payment. Its no surprise normalcy is the preferable price for one's admission to life.

At least that way you're likely to make it to eighty with your soul entirely intact. Because, you see, it is the ripping tragedy does to your soul which leaves the sort of scars that never heal.

And that's what you don't learn without experiencing it on your own.

Thats what Lance feels when he describes himself as numb. Its a residual cold. A frostbite from the walls of ice built around after a single last shred was taken. The bit he never counted on. The part he couldn't bare to lose but had never realized that by such a nature he was - perhaps - most bound to lose.

And that last virgin piece was laying in the hands of Haggar through Zarkon himself.

The choice was predictable but don't let convention tell you it was easy. Don't let the movies and shows which display justice appear simple. Because it was here that Lance had to choose whether he turned himself in or entered the realm of a truly criminal nature.

The choice itself seemed _most_ criminal.

Martyrdom. It's a slippery slope. Because it isn't always right and it isn't necessarily wrong either. It just is. What it isn't is death. After all, there is only some nobility in dying for someone else. Its most glorified, of course, but it is selfish.

Why should the other live with the knowedge that you were traded for someone else?

So being a martyr is living with your own death. And for Lance- he was being asked to die in such a way that he no longer recognized himself.

He'd have to steal without a shred of safety. He'd have to sell himself short of his dignity. He'd have to give something away which you can only truly give once because any choice afterwards seems like penance based on your own pained actions.

And he wasn't exactly being _asked._

* * *

Present Day ( UTC-16:19 )

Wind is a fascinating phenomenon. It is air breezing past and it makes sounds based on the surrounding weather.

Wind is the act of air milling about, fluttering forth in confused calamity. And it carries within it its own monologue, full of tunes and follies which often attribute to whatever weather the wind has been wandering in.

And perhaps most fascinating is the extreme power within the wind that many would never credit it with. Perhaps because in their dreary lives of stale deserts full of unsuspecting but nevertheless malicious monotony the wind saw no reason for additional pain as their stories dried and added to the dust which made such badlands.

But anyone who has ever sought to climb higher has felt the wind's pull.

There is a pause in his story here like a calming breath or a distracted thought and it is with a rather fond memory of a younger self discovering just how shaky tree-tops can be that Shiro re-enters with a gentle cough.

The interruption and the unvoiced question finds Lance sitting at the top of that tree clutching absolutely nothing with the sudden and swift realization that trees move and it is the wind who decides which ground is steady.

And it is a second similarly silent breeze which brings him back to the seemingly sturdy ground of the airport rooftop as Shiro, voice low, commented,"I can see why you might have chosen to say yes."

A scoff was Lance's way of spitting the wind back at him.

Shiro greeted the remark with a nod. He was expecting silence. An angry sort of quiet- a cold shoulder.

Instead, he got a far off ripple in a vast pond.

"Have you ever felt like your life is spiraling out of control?" A ripple that skipped and glided and fell into otherwise peaceful water.

The calmness was odd given the statement.

"Nearly every day."

His casted hand raised the sunglasses unveiling stormy blue eyes.

"Then perhaps you know that self-destructive apathy right before you face the consequences of each and every action."

And there it was, the splash as the rolling stone sank. Shiro took a steadying breathe as he felt the weight of Lance's world settling into his stomach and replied, voice stoic, "Yeah."

A shadow fell over them both as a plane flew overhead with jets loud enough to deafen and exhaust idly poisoning the sunny day and as it passed everything outside the the plane seemed consumed by it's overarching ambiance... but a single voice rang out amidst the noise.

"I never said yes."


	6. Chapter 6

Present Day ( UTC-16:24 )

"I never said yes."

"Then why do you work for him?"

He sighed, deflating almost entirely before drawing in the exhaust of the passed plane - and perhaps the entire world- releasing the excess air with a quiet frustration.

His shadow seemed to envelope Shiro as he stood; hallow with frozen frost but with the sudden strength and speed of a crashing wave.

The moment wavered, rippling in the disrupted silence.

"My sister is on her deathbed."

And it clicked. Silent in all but intent, Shiro joined him in standing.

"And I bet Zarkon heard as much."

Lance shook his head, a small sniff tossed to the wind, replaced with a cold laugh and a piercing stare met head on and perhaps help just as stiffly.

"Kleptomania is hardly a basis for a career, don't you think?"

The wind picked up as Shiro nodded. He wasn't one to deny how being caught between a rock and a hard place often resulted in sacrifice. In a way, he could respect a motive of that sort.

"You didn't get very far in this escape."

"I needed air."

There was a breathy chuckle as Shiro billowed a gust of wind about them both, "I know the feeling." And at the small smile, he willed a stronger burst to ruffle the thief's hair.

"I have to go back. He'll kill her. I-"

"I won't let that happen." The air turned sharp.

"And just what do you think I've been doing? I want Zarkon gone as much if not more than everyone else but you gotta have some skin involved to win a game like that- and you get nothing if you just wait for it to be taken from you!"

It feels good to shout. To take the breath given to us and put the malice we receive as a result back into the world that gave it to us in the first place. And standing there on that rooftop, Lance's animosity was visual as he stood guarded his breath escaping him in white puffs.

A thick sheen of ice reverberated around the rooftop with each pant as the words once frozen in storage dripped out of his mouth, his heart leaking with the force of his failures. Bitter blue eyes pierced through stringent brown.

"You're gonna lock up your best bargaining chip if you-"

"I have a plan." Calm. Steady.

"And I'm sure you know just how to fuck that up." Raw. Arctic.

"Only if you're happy with fucking it up." The crest of a roaring wave.

The picturesque moment. The peak of the tide. And then what was thrown finally crashed down.

"You really want me to work with you guys?"

"Yes."

Sometimes de rigueur masks itself as a decision. In reality, it's already decided. And equally so, when running a race you don't remember starting, there are moments where you must lie, cheat, beg and ultimately- steal- to chase on. Lance was just surprised to be given a helpful hand in this game of cards.

There was a splash as the ice became a puddle, Lance stepped forward hand stretched outward and the faint trace of a smirk as he asked, "How big was that explosion?"

* * *

A/N: And now most of the story is set in the present so it won't be as... poetic? I know I write as obscurely as I process emotion- and I can't deny that when I began this fic, I was going through so steep shit. But I stand by it- as ambiguous at it may appear- and offer you this more legible form in the near future. In the mean time, though, please give me love and affection in the form of a comment- they brighten my day in ways I can't express!


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